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Irrandirium
Following the Interstitial Saturation Event, the discovery of irrandirium and the development of processes to refine it led to its widespread use as a replacement for metallic objects in Phlogistonian technology, ultimately ensuring the utter destruction of Carthage. Discovery During a routine scouting mission in the Southern Holds of Phlogistonia in late E7Y17, C-E Varo Solandis noticed a prismatic glinting on the otherwise desolate winter horizon. Suspecting a Carthaginian ambush, C-E Solandis signalled his scouting party to proceed with caution into a flanking maneuver. As they closed on the location of the iridescent glittering, Solandis quickly realized that there were no other living beings nearby. The party found instead a brightly shining shard of irrandirium jutting out of the earth. Still expecting some sort of explosive trap, the engineers proceeded with caution, and begun to dig up the strange crystal. When they had not found an end to the crystal after a couple of hours of digging, Solandis finally decided to call in their discovery to High Command, marked the area with an encrypted beacon, and set out to finish the scouting mission. Properties Though beautifully scintillating in its natural state, the crystalline structure of irrandirium is not properly aligned for optimal structural integrity. Therefore, an electronucleochemical process is required to bring the crystals into harmonic synchronicity. Once refined, the (now much smaller) crystals emit a faint blue light and tend to "hum" when refined crystals of the same parent crystal are nearby. This humming increases the closer the small crystals get to the remainder of the parent crystal; according to irrandirium processors, it is "extremely inadvisable" to bring the excess parent crystals within 50 meters of the refined shards. The complex microstructures found within the refined crystals seem to suggest that by aligning the harmonic layers, language circuits are created and the crystal actually begins to communicate with other crystals. So far, the "humming" emitted by the refined crystals has not been proven to be anything more than a random interference pattern and has not been shown to be indicative of the crystalline language, though one side of the ethical debate surrounding its use as an industrial material is prone to using this faulty claim as fact. Refinement Process As chunks of raw irrandirium are brought into the processing facility, they go through an acidic bath to remove all extraneous debris and to break off the weakest parts of the crystal. Next, the cleaned crystals are moved along a conveyer belt to electrode chambers, where they are repeatedly zapped with an oscillating voltage of 100 to 800 MegaWatts, which primes them for introduction to the chemical vats. The exact mixture of chemicals in the vats is a state secret, even so long after the Phlogistonian Revolution; when asked to describe the chemical process, the irrandirium plant manager declined to comment. All that is currently known about these mysterious chemical vats is that the crystals go in, sparking with electrical charge, and come out a week later, jelly-like and with a neutral charge, though retaining their initial shape. After the chemical stew process, the crystals are introduced into the electron bombardment chamber of a nuclear reactor. This last process has the effect of firming up the crystalline structure (realigning the harmonic layers) and causing the crystals to emit a bluish glow. Citations Carthage Interstitial Saturation Event Phlogistonian Revolution Phlogistonian Technology